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Actually, the ever growing homschoolers have proven that wrong. They have a higher employment rates, are statistically happier, and of course, they fair better in college which requires independent learning.
Show me a non-homeschool group study that supports this.
]That's not how it works at all high schools, though. Some classes are arranged by grade (which is age-related), but many classes have a mix of grades and ages. At my high school the only actual grade-based class I had was English (which works fine, because that's a very easy subject to work at your own level within the larger structure of the class.). Everything else was based on other factors.
If anything, the concept of a room full of kids sitting at their own computers doing their own thing with a supervisor/"teacher" watching them sounds like the problem here, and is exactly the sort of the bad image some people form in their minds when they think about homeschooling in the high school years. As some posters repeatedly point out, homeschoolers aren't just working on their own, they're part of a larger community and therefore aren't missing out on the intereaction element. Why, then, would we want to pay for public school students to sit in a room at a computer, isolated from the stimulation that comes from in-person interaction and discussion with teachers and fellow students?
I think there are better (as well as more cost-effective) ways to increase opportunities for kids; online schooling might work as a good supplemental option for very small or isolated districts that would otherwise lack access to the opportunities offered in larger districts (choice of classes, opportunities to take more advanced courses, etc.), but I think looking at ways to restructure current system would be more useful in the long run than would switching to online options. I'm not sure where testing and state curriculums fit into all of this, but they are certainly an issue, too.
I actually have to disagree with this thought process. You are simply assuming that more populated places have more to offer than less populated places, that those kids are somehow missing on opportunities...spreading the myths of homeschooling into rural pubic schools.
The reason I disagree is that there could be classes in each school that the students wouldn't otherwise have access to. In fact, I was excited to take a special class from my tiny school of 600 (total for grades 7-12) and this class was one of only TWO in the entire nation. The issue is that anyone and everyone has more opportunities not presented at their school that could be accessed by other means in others schools, regardless of their size.
That's not at all what I'm assuming, at least not on a blanket statement level. I am assuming that it's easier for a large district to offer a wider variety of courses than a small school: that's common sense. Maybe there's a small public district out there that can afford to offer the same number of classes for a high school of 200 kids as a school (within a larger district, where often teachers can also split time between schools) with 1200 kids; it's not saying that one school is better than the other, just that it's tough to financially justify, say, a highly advanced class that maybe only 30 kids take at the school with 1200, but only 3 take at the smaller school. Sure, the smalll school may offer highly specialized classes, and I know many do. But there's still a limit of what schools can offer, and that limit is lower at smaller or rural schools. That's probably not an issue for most kids, but if your kid is the advanced one that runs out of calculus classes ahead of schedule then yes, you'd like to have some alternatives. For example, the West Carroll District's high school, a fairly new consolidated district serving a rural area of Illinois, offers Spanish 1-4; perfect if you start school at Spanish I, but if you come in at Spanish II you're going to run out of options before you graduate. And that's it for languages; there's no money to justify having two or three language choices, even if they'd like to do so in an ideal world. Similarly, the math options cap out at pre-calc. Now they do have some offerings not offered at my city school (Agricultural Business Operations, for one); maybe the city kid who wants to explore farming could benefit from an online class in that, just as the math whiz in Carroll County who was yearning for Calculus could take that online. Still, overall the need for more classes is going to be more common in smaller schools just because of basic numbers. Fewer kids usually means fewer classes because schools can't have the luxury of funding everything.
Small schools and districts have many benefits and can provide an excellent education, but it's not spreading a myth to say that simple economics and logistical issues mean that there's a greater chance that they'll be offering fewer options than the big schools. And again, that doesn't matter for most kids, because most kids are following a fairly set schedule (or will just have to settle for
And I don't know where in the world you're getting that I'm spreading a myth about homeschooling. If you'll look closer I'm actually SUPPORTING homeschooling by pointing out that the concept that homeschoolers don't have interaction with others is a myth.
That's not at all what I'm assuming, at least not on a blanket statement level. I am assuming that it's easier for a large district to offer a wider variety of courses than a small school: that's common sense. Maybe there's a small public district out there that can afford to offer the same number of classes for a high school of 200 kids as a school (within a larger district, where often teachers can also split time between schools) with 1200 kids; it's not saying that one school is better than the other, just that it's tough to financially justify, say, a highly advanced class that maybe only 30 kids take at the school with 1200, but only 3 take at the smaller school. Sure, the smalll school may offer highly specialized classes, and I know many do. But there's still a limit of what schools can offer, and that limit is lower at smaller or rural schools. That's probably not an issue for most kids, but if your kid is the advanced one that runs out of calculus classes ahead of schedule then yes, you'd like to have some alternatives. For example, the West Carroll District's high school, a fairly new consolidated district serving a rural area of Illinois, offers Spanish 1-4; perfect if you start school at Spanish I, but if you come in at Spanish II you're going to run out of options before you graduate. And that's it for languages; there's no money to justify having two or three language choices, even if they'd like to do so in an ideal world. Similarly, the math options cap out at pre-calc. Now they do have some offerings not offered at my city school (Agricultural Business Operations, for one); maybe the city kid who wants to explore farming could benefit from an online class in that, just as the math whiz in Carroll County who was yearning for Calculus could take that online. Still, overall the need for more classes is going to be more common in smaller schools just because of basic numbers. Fewer kids usually means fewer classes because schools can't have the luxury of funding everything.
Small schools and districts have many benefits and can provide an excellent education, but it's not spreading a myth to say that simple economics and logistical issues mean that there's a greater chance that they'll be offering fewer options than the big schools. And again, that doesn't matter for most kids, because most kids are following a fairly set schedule (or will just have to settle for
And I don't know where in the world you're getting that I'm spreading a myth about homeschooling. If you'll look closer I'm actually SUPPORTING homeschooling by pointing out that the concept that homeschoolers don't have interaction with others is a myth.
See what happens when I try to use fewer words. I was talking about the thought process most people have about small rurual schools, that somehow they lack something. I wasn't disagreeing with you, just pulling a popualr misconception out of what you said that is a myth that many people believe; that some feel as strongly about as homeschooling. I just wanted everyone else to see that I did believe that small schools might also be able to provide opportunities as well, even though they would have fewer.
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